Number of mobile phones now exceeds Australia's population

Published on: 27th Apr 2008

Note -- this news article is more than a year old.

For the first time, there is now more than one mobile service for every Australian, with 21.26 million mobile phone services in operation at 30 June 2007, a 7.6 per cent increase from 19.76 million the year before, according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

A significant increase in 3G mobile customer numbers helped drive that
growth, which was in contrast to a small but continued decline in fixed-phone
services over the last financial year.

¢â‚¬ËœThere are now more than 4.5 million 3G mobile services in Australia, a 192
per cent increase between 30 June 2006 and 30 June 2007,' said Chris Chapman,
ACMA Chairman.

The number of fixed services dropped from 11.26 million to 10.92 million
between 30 June 2006 and 30 June 2007. The number of payphones in operation in
Australia (both Telstra operated and privately operated) dropped by 8,368, to
49,862.

In 2005-06 almost a million new geographic numbers were allocated by ACMA. In
2006-07, geographic numbers were predominantly allocated for VoIP services -
2.89 million out of a total 3.23 million. This increase is a sign of competition
and the entry of new VoIP providers into the Australian market requiring a
supply of numbers for services across the country.

Internet subscribers were another area of communications services growth.
There were 6.43 million internet subscribers in Australia, made up of 2.09
million narrowband and 4.33 million broadband subscribers (to the end of March
2007). Domain name registrations also grew: 795,368 .com.au registrations in the
year compared with 612,918 the previous year.